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Every Saturday morning, my boyfriend and I separately take the New York Times News Quiz. I am a very competitive person, so I often “study” beyond what I absorb from just working in a newsroom — reading the daily NYT Morning newsletter, trying to give a crap about sports for the sake of a point or two.
Lately, however, I have been doing very poorly (or more poorly than usual) because I just can’t bring myself to read the international news, or not with any real attention.
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I believe in the importance of current affairs and the power of being well-informed about the world, but I just can’t deal with the firehose of garbage coming from every corner of the globe right now.
As some witty person put it on social media: “The human body is not designed to know what the worst person in the world is doing every 15 minutes.”
You know what it IS designed for, however?
Watching a French man dance with his cats.
A trailer for the bonkers 1996 musical production of Wuthering Heights starring Cliff Richard.
Bob Mortimer spinning a wild yarn on British comedy show Would I Lie to You?
Chris O’Dowd swallowing a fly on The Graham Norton Show.
People responding to a woman who made a Threads post about accidentally punching herself in the face while pulling up a blanket.
This guy who lists things (shapes, beverages, awards, types of doughnut) and if he would date them.
Heated Rivalry star Hudson Williams’ Peloton ad.
I once read that men send you memes they find funny, while women send you memes they think you will find funny. That is obviously reductive, but I feel very lucky to have friends and family who seem to identify as women when it comes to meme/video clip distribution.
My mum often sends me Reels that are the equivalent of The Simpsons’ Man Getting Hit by Football; she doesn’t care for Jackass-style shenanigans but she knows it’s my weakness (call me immature, but there’s nothing funnier than a well-timed shot to the groin).
I have a group Facebook chat with a bunch of high-school friends; we have a long-running joke about whether raccoons are adorable or evil menaces, which has resulted in a lot of clips of trash pandas eating grapes with their cute little hands (I’m in the adorable camp).
I have friends who send me clips of fat cats trying to sit in too-small boxes, or Oxford comma memes designed to enrage me, or movie trailers they know will intrigue me.
It’s a kind of modern love language, carefully selecting content that you hope will delight a friend — sometimes someone you haven’t seen in person in years — by making them smile, making them cry, making them think, making them feel.
Brain rot is a real thing, and mindless scrolling isn’t good for your mental health. But an Instagram inbox full of clips that say “This made me think of you” — whether it’s a recipe, a cartoon, or, and I cannot stress this enough, Hudson Williams’ Peloton ad — is healing.
And if I just wanna take a break from watching the world burn to enjoy a woman who makes gentle folk songs inspired by her daily Wordle guesses, I think that’s OK.
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